Linger
by writerdragonfly
Summary: Cuddling, sleepy kisses, and early morning sunlight. They're both content to let the moment linger. Coldflash.


_**Author's note:** For the ever darling dragdragdragon on tumblr._

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Len thought, however briefly, about moving–about pulling away and finding his clothes, slinking away in the sleepy afterglow of their intensely passionate sex and not looking back–but ultimately he found he didn't want that, he wanted this quiet and still and warm moment between him and the Flash–between him and _Barry–_ something far different than the fast and cold air that normally lingered between them, and he wanted it to last, and so he stayed, wrapped his arm around the far younger man and pulled him close, whispering, "I've got you, Kid," and slowly fell into sleep.

Barry woke relaxed and warm, a firm chest pressed up against his back and an arm wrapped around him, and though it took a long minute to remember who he'd gone to sleep with, he found himself pleasantly and happily surprised to find Captain–no, " _call me Len, babe_ ,"–still in bed with him, taking advantage of that fact to hope what he was about to do wouldn't end badly and pressing kisses along the arm bracketed against him, shifting until he was the one pinning Len down and pressing sleepy kisses into his mouth as he blinked awake and kissed him back with equally increasing passion.

The first two times had been fast and hard and frantic, the culmination of their months of angry flirting and somewhat erotic exchanging of blows, something good and exhausting and real; the third time was slower, it was early morning sleepy kisses, fingers trailing patterns across sun-drenched skin, slow steady thrusts in unspoken unison, moans whispered into shoulders and the expanse of bared necks like secrets.

For Len, it was like waking up as a small child-the sun streaming through the bedroom window and casting a yellow glow across his bedspread, his mother's tiny little laugh echoing lightly around as she and his father banged around in the kitchen making fresh blueberry pancakes after the yesterday's trip to the farmer's market-and it was like the curious expanse of time after his mother was gone and Lisa's mother was there, the sweet smell of her cherry vanilla perfume as she rubbed gentle circles across the expanse of her rounded belly, the first time he held his little sister after Lisa's mother passed and he knew that he would go to the ends of the earth for her, and it was one of those easy, simple moments where everything slowly came into place; for Len, it was like finding peace and home and finally something that felt like it was real and right.

And for Barry it was something new, something he'd longed for, something he'd wished for-that gentle reminder wrapped up in the feel of another person that said more than he had words for, more than he knew how to explain even to himself-Barry had already known that feeling of home, of belonging in both the family he'd been born into and the one he'd been brought into, and it wasn't that for him, though something about the moment rang in that same symphony of feeling-no, for Barry it wasn't about finding home so much as the comfort in knowing that what'd he'd been looking for was just waiting for him to take in, to bring it in and swallow it whole until he could feel whole and separate in equal measure.

Neither of them were keen to speak, to bring up the night and the lingering morning that followed-no, they were both insistent on refusing to break the spell, refusing to return to the world where they were on different sides if not totally opposite ones, where they had their supposed parts in a typecast world that would sooner have them fight to the death than to come together in any sort of blissful or passionate union.

Len found the moments that had brought their mouths and then the rest of them together in the first place somewhat hazy, lost between cheesy puns and pissed off screaming and the heat of what had followed, like a wildfire had erupted in the flash between two points-the before and the after-but he didn't regret that burning, that yearning burst free of the cold persona he worked so hard to turn himself into-he _couldn't_ , not yet.

Barry remembered it with clarity, how he had felt an anger in himself building until he felt as if his skin was being licked by flames, and it was only the cold skin of Len's bare hand on his wrist that had brought him back, settled him into something manageable; it was the look in his eyes in that half second between the fight and the calm that brought him from anger to want, and led him to crash his lips against Len's the second that followed, a carnal need more than a furious pain.

And now they were swept up in each other, naked bodies pressed in tangled heaps of skin and sweat and post-coital bliss, neither of them in a hurry to shatter the calm that followed their post-battle distracted choice but it was need that won out, regardless of their desire.

Barry pried Len's fingers loose of his arms with a lazy and somewhat affectionate smile that matched Len's own, slipping out of the bed as quick as he could without using his enhanced skills or losing their shared gaze.

"Breakfast?" Barry managed to ask, his voice somewhat hoarse between their actions of the night before and the edge of sleep.

There was an unspoken question hanging in the air between them now, and it meant _something_ and maybe _everything;_ it was "are you sure," and "does this mean," and "will you _stay?_ "

But for all their differences, Len knew it wouldn't have happened in the first place if they both hadn't wanted it, if there wasn't _something_ there already, if they couldn't start something between them, something lasting, something new, something real.

"Breakfast," Len answered, letting his answer speak for itself and wanting whatever it meant between them to be worth whatever difficulties they were sure to have given their positions, given who they were and what they did.

They dressed in the bare minimum and headed to the kitchen in Barry's tiny apartment together, pressed their sides against each other more often than necessary, cooked in quiet tandem and oddly shy glances.

And when the moment finally broke as they argued over the proper way to cook their eggs-over easy or over hard, and Len would not back down from his position-they were still pressed too close together for enemies, too intimate for merely friends, and for the first time, Len had hope they could do this.

When Len left Barry's apartment later that morning, Barry's lips lingered on his for a long moment and it felt like a declaration.


End file.
